


Choice

by BurningTea



Series: Season 11 fic [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Dean and Sam need hitting with a truth bomb, Episode: s11e14 The Vessel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 01:42:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6065923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of being told Cas has given himself to Lucifer, Dean thinks over a few things. This is certainly not the first time Cas has thrown himself away to help Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I just want to reach through that screen and slap Sam and Dean both. Not noticing that wasn't Cas? I'm not even surprised Sam thought killing himself to save Dean was a typical Cas thing to do, but it's about time they worked out that's screwed up.

Dean sits and thinks. He thinks about a submarine full of people who died before Dean was ever born, but whose deaths happened only hours ago as he watched on and did nothing. He thinks of his own lack of power, how he can’t fight Amara and how he can’t save people who deserve saving and how he can’t even see when his best friend has been swallowed by the Devil. Sam says Cas chose this. 

Cas didn’t choose this. 

But he did choose to open the door to Purgatory, and he did choose to stay away from Dean there. And he did choose to complete what he thought were trials to seal himself away in Heaven, even knowing the other angels might kill him. And way back, he did choose to side with a few humans against the might of his own kind. 

It’s not a stretch for Cas to make a choice that risks his own death. 

Hell, now Dean’s started thinking, he can list off more and more: throwing that holy-fire Molotov cocktail at Michael; staying to fight them all off at Chuck’s; taking on a warehouse full of angels alone, with a sigil carved into his chest that would rip him apart as well as them. 

Come to think of it, Dean isn’t sure why they were all so surprised a bunch of angels would turn themselves into suicide bombs. Cas has been a walking suicide bomb for years, just waiting for a hint of where he should throw himself to save Dean. 

Humanity. To save humanity.

Except… Except Sam, once he sat down and dragged up the whole, sorry story, still thought Cas was Cas when Lucifer stood chopping up ingredients for that spell, a spell which would have likely killed the real Cas. And that hadn’t given Sam even the slightest clue something was wrong. 

Worse, Dean is pretty sure he wouldn’t have suspected anything, either. 

“He really said you needed Lucifer to bring me back,” Dean says, staring at his own hand wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle.

Across from him at the library table, Sam shifts in his seat. The creak of the chair is louder than it should be, like the Bunker itself is in shock over what’s happened. Or over what’s been revealed. It must have happened weeks back. And they didn’t notice.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, he said it was taking everything to stop Lucifer from killing me, and we needed him for…for getting you back.”

“No mention of killing Amara?”

He glances up to see Sam frowning, his own drink, a mug of strong coffee, cradled in both hands.

“Well, I mean, it must be why he said ‘yes’, right?” Sam says. “He must have believed Lucifer was the only way to win.”

“That dumb son of a bitch,” Dean says. 

But the lie rings hollow in his heart. Cas isn’t dumb. Cas has never been dumb. Much though Dean likes to ignore it, to keep Cas smaller and safer in his mind by stripping away his status as a warrior, the guy’s a tactical genius and always has been. The problem Dean has with that is how Cas has his parameters set up: Cas’ safety is never factored in. Dean’s is imperative. Sam’s too, but there’s always been an extra element to the way Cas throws himself on the pyre for Dean, something Dean’s spent years ignoring. 

“He must have had a reason,” Sam says, but he sounds almost as flattened as Dean feels, despite the fresh coffee which must be bubbling in his veins.

“Yeah, well.” 

Any more meaningful words get clogged up in Dean’s throat. He wants to ask Sam if they’ve let Cas down, if they’ve ignored and wronged him. He wants to ask why an angel would treat himself like something disposable. Cas once told Dean he wasn’t a hammer, and maybe he was right, because Cas has been treating himself more like the strip of metal to be worked, more like something to be bashed and shaped and turned into tool after tool after tool. And Dean’s having trouble fighting off the thought that he’s led Cas to that anvil more than once. 

“We’ll get him back,” he says, because he has to. He has to believe they’ll manage it.

“Dean…” Sam says, trails off. 

Whatever Sam’s thinking, he doesn’t make any more effort to share it, but from the way he looks down, pain clearer on his face than Dean ever wants to see, it’s obvious what he’s got in mind. 

“He’s not going to cling onto the fucking Devil, Sam,” Dean says. Snaps. 

None of this is Sam’s fault. At least, none of it is more Sam’s fault than Dean’s. But Sam is here, and Cas isn’t, so Dean can’t shout at Cas about how fucking stupid he’s being, thinking Dean would rather Cas was useful than here. 

“He might,” Sam says, and sadness laces that. “Dean, he… We…”

The chair creaks again, and Sam sits forward, leaning over the table in that way he has when he wants to press something home, as though he thinks closing the distance will give his words more chance of making it through.

“I didn’t even realize it wasn’t Cas. I thought he was planning on killing himself to get you back, and that seemed normal to me. Normal.” Sam pauses and takes a breath. It shudders his whole frame. “Does that seem right to you, that our closest friend, someone we both see as practically a brother, would be ready to die for one of us and we just accept it? When did we turn into this?”

“You mean when did we start just taking it as read that Cas would give himself up for our benefit?” Dean asks, because he’s just been going over that, and he isn’t sure when it became as much about the Winchesters as it did about saving all of humanity. 

He still believes Cas sees himself as a protector of humanity. It isn’t just about Sam and Dean. But… 

“We shouldn’t have let it get like this, Sammy,” he says, and he doesn’t even try to wipe away the moisture in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have let it get like this.” 

Fuck it. Cas deserves a few tears, if only Dean could manage to shed them properly. 

“No. You were right with ‘we’,” Sam says. “Dean, when you had the Mark, I… I forced Cas to go along with my plans. I mean, yeah, he could have said no, but I knew he’d do whatever it took to get you back, even if it meant destroying himself. I knew that, and I used it. To get you back to me. I’m not even sure I cared if Cas came through it. Or… It’s not…”

“It’s not just Cas,” Dean says, and the coiling anger over Charlie’s loss sits in his belly, not breaking through the suffocating fog of shock left by Cas’ latest suicide attempt, but still there. Always still there. It’s been long enough that Dean’s spent the pit of many nights playing out his own sins, though. “It’s her, and it’s Kevin, and it’s a metric-tonne of others.”

“But we’ve saved people, too,” Sam adds. He sounds uncertain.

“Yeah. Yeah, we have.” Dean isn’t any more certain, even though they have. 

They’ve saved the world. He’s just not sure whether they should have gone on after Stull. Maybe that should have been their only play. Or, at least, maybe they should have played it differently. 

“We can’t bring them back,” he says, at last, “but we can bring back Cas. And then you can apologize to him, make him understand you were wrong to use him like that, that I was never worth what happened to him.”

“Dean-”

“No. No, this isn’t some self-hating crap I’m pulling here, Sammy. This is just the truth. Cas has given up an army for me. Hell, he’s given up his whole species and his home and his wings, and whether they were all clear choices over us or them, it all started when he chose us in that fucking room and sent his own boss packing. Fuck. And with his own blood. The writing was literally on the wall and I didn’t see it, either. Not really.”

“What writing?” Sam asks carefully, despite the fact Dean’s being perfectly clear.

“That angel would do anything for me, Sam. Just use himself up, let himself suffer. And I’ve called him stupid and called him a baby and called him a traitor. And he still keeps coming back.”

“We want him to come back.”

“Not crawling on his belly, Sam. Not over broken glass. Not just we can send him out to die again. You said… You said watching me die, over and over, back when Gabriel got hold of us, was one of the worse things you ever went through.”

Sam nods. He keeps quiet. There’s a wary look in his eyes.

“How many times have we watched Cas die? How many times have I had to watch him die? You really telling me that doesn’t wear you down?”

And now Dean is angry, and knowing Sam’s upset too isn’t enough to stop him lashing out. Sam’s grieving, far as Dean can tell, and that sends Dean raging, because Cas isn’t dead and they have to get him back. Not mourn him. Not say goodbye, like they’ve crossed him off their to-do list and can just move on. 

“What do you want, Dean?” Sam asks. “You want him back and you don’t want him back?”

“I want him safe,” Dean says, but of course he wants Cas here, by Dean’s side. And maybe he should have made sure Cas knew that. 

“Cas is a soldier,” Sam says. “Safe isn’t something he does.”

“But he doesn’t think he’s a soldier, Sam,” Dean says, even though Cas has called himself that in the past. Going from what Dean’s seen over the years, Cas doesn’t get it, he really doesn’t. “He sees himself more like…like a weapon, something you use in the fight and just…store away when you haven’t got an enemy to kill. And we’ve fucking let him think that. And that’s why he’s done this. Isn’t it?”

“He said he wanted to be useful,” Sam says slowly, in a tone that says he really doesn’t want to remember those moments. 

“Useful.” Dean sneers the word. “Not valued. Useful. We’ve screwed him over. And now we need to save him from Lucifer and from his own warped view of himself, and we need to put it right.”

And maybe, if - no, when - they manage it, Dean will have to explain to Sam that only one of them sees Cas as almost a brother. But this isn’t the time. And Cas should be the first one to hear it. Assuming they can ever get Cas to hear anything Dean says again.

The thought of having to spill his heart to the Devil leaves Dean cold, but if it takes spitting love in Satan’s face in the hopes some of it reaches Cas, then so be it. No way is Dean leaving Cas thinking being possessed by the Devil is his best call. 

He just hasn’t got a clue how he’s going to do that. So he sits, and he thinks, and he makes himself believe he can do it. It’s the only choice he can make.


End file.
